WP5 infrastructure Call 2024

At the PIANOFORTE Infrastructures Workshop in January 2024, colleagues from PIANOFORTE Infrastructures WP and from the European Union (EU) Radiation Protection Research (RPR) Infrastructures Community discussed access to infrastructures in support of training and research. It was agreed that, while some of the large infrastructures have excellent policies and procedures in place, there is a clear need for further development and harmonisation of routes to access.

PIANOFORTE WP5, Infrastructures is now seeking proposals from the community to do one or more of the following:

-          Improve policies and procedures in relation to access to infrastructures for researchers within the EU RPR communities and beyond;

-          Improve communication of the available infrastructures and the routes to access, considering the FAIR principles;

-          Harmonise routes to access for groups of infrastructures.

Best practice in this area includes: Clear, easily accessible (e.g. on the website) descriptions of the available infrastructures and examples of how they have been used in the past; Information about how to express an interest or book time using the infrastructure, including the related costs; Information about Dosimetry, Calibration, biological facilities, Health and Safety and other related aspects, and local assistance for the visiting researchers in organising these; Information about travel and accommodation and local assistance for the visiting researchers in organising these. It is intended that this activity will widen awareness of the available infrastructures and the need for FAIR and open science.

This call is for projects of up to 1 year focused on one or a small group of Infrastructures. The start date should be before the 31st March 2025.

Funding is only available for existing partners of the PIANOFORTE project, and proposals from one up to a small number of partners are welcome.  The non-funded involvement of colleagues from SNETP / the OFFERR project (OFFERR - European User Facility Network - SNETP), as well as other partners outside the current PIANOFORTE consortium, is strongly encouraged. Separate budgets for each partner that will have costs are required. The budgets cannot be overlapping with each other if a common proposal is put forward.

The total budget available for this call is 25k Euros (total funding), and the total cost of each project should be no more than 10k Euros (in total, with PIANOFORTE contribution at 60%, according to the standard rules of PIANOFORTE funding). If the total cost of proposals deemed to be eligible according to the below criteria exceeds the allocated budget, then those funded will be the ones with the highest marks overall.

The application will require the following information (with word limits):

-          Project lead and key participants, detailing existing contributions to PIANOFORTE (300 words);

-          The proposed project (1000 words);

-          The details of the added value and expected impact for the RPR infrastructures landscape (500 words);

-          The budget and justification, with details of costs for each partner (250 words).

Applicants will also be required to complete the attached form to add/update the details of the project related infrastructures in the AIR2D2 (download here).

When planning the activity, please also consider the possibility of reducing the carbon footprint as far as possible.

Applications should be submitted using the provided template (download here) by email to: liz.ainsbury@ukhsa.gov.uk by the
deadline of 23:59 Central European time on the 31st October 2024. 

Applicants will receive an email acknowledgement of their proposal.

Assessment will be carried out by the WP5 International Oversight Committee, who will review the proposals according to the following criteria:

-          Alignment with the aims of PIANOFORTE overall and of WP5 – Infrastructures (including FAIR, open science);

-          Quality of the submitted application;

-          Impact and added value in relation to access to EU RPR infrastructures.

The outcome will be shared by email on or before the 30th November 2024.

Successful projects will be required to submit a short report on the activity and how this has met the stated aims before the 31st March 2026, and to engage with other WP5 activities including meetings and dissemination activities.